scholarly journals The politics of platform power in surveillance capitalism: A comparative case study of ride-hailing platforms in China and the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 205943642110467
Author(s):  
Ngai Keung Chan ◽  
Chi Kwok
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Behavioral Predictions

This article uses a comparative case study of two ride-hailing platforms—DiDi Chuxing in China and Uber in the United States—to explore the comparative politics of platform power in surveillance capitalism. Surveillance capitalism is an emerging economic system that translates human experiences into surveillance assets for behavioral predictions and modifications. Through this comparative study, we demonstrate how DiDi and Uber articulate their operational legitimacy for advancing their corporate interests and visions of datafication in the face of legal uncertainty. Although DiDi and Uber are both “sectoral platforms” in urban mobility with similar visions of datafication and infrastructuralization, we highlight that they deploy different discursive legitimation strategies. Our study shows that Uber adopts a “confrontational” strategy, while DiDi employs a “collaborative” strategy when they need to legitimize their data and business practices to the public and regulatory authorities. This study offers a comparative lens to examine the social and political dynamics of platform firms based in China and the United States and, therefore, contributes to understanding the various aspirational logic of platform thinking in different political contexts.

Verán ustedes las chozas más humildes. El discurso de pobreza en la diplomacia pública cardenista dirigida a Estados Unidos

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281
Author(s):  
Sylvia Dümmer Scheel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Government ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
The New Deal

El artículo analiza la diplomacia pública del gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas centrándose en su opción por publicitar la pobreza nacional en el extranjero, especialmente en Estados Unidos. Se plantea que se trató de una estrategia inédita, que accedió a poner en riesgo el “prestigio nacional” con el fin de justificar ante la opinión pública estadounidense la necesidad de implementar las reformas contenidas en el Plan Sexenal. Aprovechando la inusual empatía hacia los pobres en tiempos del New Deal, se construyó una imagen específica de pobreza que fuera higiénica y redimible. Ésta, sin embargo, no generó consenso entre los mexicanos. This article analyzes the public diplomacy of the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, focusing on the administration’s decision to publicize the nation’s poverty internationally, especially in the United States. This study suggests that this was an unprecedented strategy, putting “national prestige” at risk in order to explain the importance of implementing the reforms contained in the Six Year Plan, in the face of public opinion in the United States. Taking advantage of the increased empathy felt towards the poor during the New Deal, a specific image of hygienic and redeemable poverty was constructed. However, this strategy did not generate agreement among Mexicans.

The New Economic Populism and the Future of Inequality in the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William W. Franko ◽  
Christopher Witko
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
Income Disparities ◽  
The Face ◽  
Over Time

The authors conclude the book by recapping their arguments and empirical results, and discussing the possibilities for the “new economic populism” to promote egalitarian economic outcomes in the face of continuing gridlock and the dominance of Washington, DC’s policymaking institutions by business and the wealthy, and a conservative Republican Party. Many states are actually addressing inequality now, and these policies are working. Admittedly, many states also continue to embrace the policies that have contributed to growing inequality, such as tax cuts for the wealthy or attempting to weaken labor unions. But as the public grows more concerned about inequality, the authors argue, policies that help to address these income disparities will become more popular, and policies that exacerbate inequality will become less so. Over time, if history is a guide, more egalitarian policies will spread across the states, and ultimately to the federal government.

scholarly journals The Social Oikos

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-32
Author(s):  
Michael Lee Humphrey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Core Points

In one of the foundational articles of persona studies, Marshall and Barbour (2015) look to Hannah Arendt for development of a key concept within the larger persona framework: “Arendt saw the need to construct clear and separate public and private identities. What can be discerned from this understanding of the public and the private is a nuanced sense of the significance of persona: the presentation of the self for public comportment and expression” (2015, p. 3). But as far back as the ancient world from which Arendt draws her insights, the affordance of persona was not evenly distributed. As Gines (2014) argues, the realm of the household, oikos, was a space of subjugation of those who were forced to be “private,” tending to the necessities of life, while others were privileged with life in the public at their expense. To demonstrate the core points of this essay, I use textual analysis of a YouTube family vlog, featuring a Black mother in the United States, whose persona rapidly changed after she and her White husband divorced. By critically examining Arendt’s concepts around public, private, and social, a more nuanced understanding of how personas are formed in unjust cultures can help us theorize persona studies in more egalitarian and robust ways.

Gaining a Voice: Storytelling and Undocumented Youth Activism in Chicago*

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Swerts
Keyword(s):  
Community Building ◽  
The United States ◽  
Youth Activism ◽  
Undocumented Youth ◽  
New Members ◽  
Youth Movement ◽  
The Public ◽  
Context Type ◽  
The Social

In recent years, undocumented youth have come out of the shadows to claim their rights in the United States. By sharing their stories, these youth gained a voice in the public debate. This article integrates insights from the literature on narratives and emotions to study how story-telling is employed within the undocumented youth movement in Chicago. I argue that undocumented youth strategically use storytelling for diverging purposes depending on the context, type of interaction, and audience involved. Based on ethnographic research, I show that storytelling allows them to incorporate new members, mobilize constituencies, and legitimize grievances. In each of these contexts, emotions play a key role in structuring the social transaction between storyteller and audience. Storytelling is thus a community-building, mobilizing, and claims-making practice in social movements. At a broader level, this case study demonstrates the power of storytelling as a political tool for marginalized populations.

Democracy Through Darkness

2021 ◽  
pp. 199-214
Author(s):  
Emily Van Duyn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Expression ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Public Expression ◽  
The Face ◽  
Democratic Norms ◽  
Sizeable Number

Chapter 8 reviews the focus of this book—how and why people keep their politics a secret—based on observations of CWG and the survey data. This chapter argues that the existence of political secrecy says that the democracy in the United States is dark. That the fear laid bare in the women’s experiences and the sizeable number of people who engage in secret political expression are evidence that liberal democratic norms are being threatened. But it also considers how political secrecy might tell us that democracy is alive. That people continue in the face of opposition and that secrecy can be a tool to help people engage in politics when they feel it is risky. Finally, this chapter addresses the implications for practitioners, asking them to consider the ways in which they privilege public expression, and encouraging them to consider this an inaccurate picture of the public itself.

Writing for Love and Money on Three Continents

2019 ◽  
pp. 33-48
Author(s):  
Kate Vieira
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Literacy Learning ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Transnational Families ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Methodological Choices ◽  
Political Borders

This chapter tells the story of the research. It first lays out the research question: How do transnational families’ experiences with migration-driven literacy learning shift across their lifespans in relation to changing political borders, economic circumstances, and technologies? It then describes the field sites in which the question was addressed: Latvia, Brazil, and the United States. Next, it outlines the reasoning behind the author’s methodological choices. Specifically, it elaborates on the author’s use of a comparative case study approach to develop the book’s central concept, “migration-driven literacy learning.” In doing so, the chapter describes how the project entailed both “reasearching across lives” and “researching across continents.” Finally, it offers a brief overview of the rest of the book.

A Code of Conduct on Restrictive Business Practices: A Third Option

1978 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 198-235
Author(s):  
Samuel Wex
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Code Of Conduct ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Norms ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
International Agreement ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Face ◽  
International Trade Organization

Competing Goals in Formulating a Code of Conduct on Restrictive Business PracticesFor the past thirty years efforts to formulate and implement acceptable international norms to regulate restrictive business practices (R.B.P.’s) affecting international trade have largely failed. Yet, none can deny the necessity of such international norms in the face of the inability of national legal systems to cope with an economic order of international dimensions. The abortive International Trade Organization, as part of the Havana Charter of 1948, and the Draft E.C.O.S.O.C. International Agreement of 1953, which were originally initiated by the United States, were eventually rejected by it because “the various national policies, legislation, and enforcement procedures in this field were not sufficiently comparable.”

A Lack of Language – Waging War or Combatting Crime? The Blurred Rule of International Law in the Face of the Attacks of September 11, 2001

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (17) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claus Binder
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
The Face ◽  
The United Nations

After the terrorists' attacks of September 11, 2001, a lot of war rhetoric came out of the public and private sphere within the United States of America. On October 7, 2001, however, the rhetoric turned into reality as President George W. Bush countered the terrorist attacks and the threat of future terrorism with military means. While waging that new war U.S. governmental officials constantly make one important point, and that is that the United States are just exercising their right of self-defense. Moreover, on the day after the attacks, the Security Council of the United Nations unanimously reaffirmed the inherent right of self-defense as recognized by the Charter of the United Nations. Does that mean that international law is just that clear?

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